SOFTWARE & ONLINE RESOURCES

Introducing the

PRODUCTGUIDE

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

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Time is money! And onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 7.5 hits the mark. When sitting at your computer, it’s never fun flipping back and forth between applications. This package has just about everything you could ever want in your postproduction workflow.

Best of all, you don’t need PhotoShop! While the tool works seamlessly with PhotoShop and Lightroom as a plug-in, it operates as a stand-alone platform, allowing you unprecedented access to editing tools.

Perfect Photo Suite 7.5 includes these features:Perfect B&W // Develop stunning black-and-white images quickly and easily. It includes powerful tools that add dramatic, elegant, and classic B&W looks to images instantly, offering you complete creative control.Perfect Portrait 2 // Enjoy powerful portrait retouching, now improved with more accurate automated feature detection and enhancement tools to smooth skin, remove blemishes, brighten eyes and teeth, correct skin color, and reduce red eye. Perfect Layers // Combine images and extend your image editing options in a layered file workflow without PhotoShop. Create and edit multilayered files directly from Lightroom, Aperture, or as a stand-alone application. Perfect Effects 4 // Extend your creative power and find even more ways to create images with impact. Perfect Effects 4 delivers an extended library of photographic effects, frames and edges, and presets designed by industry experts via a flexible new browser with keyword search functionality and favorites selection.Perfect Mask 5.2 // Create high-quality masks quickly and easily with automated functionality and powerful tools that make selecting subjects and isolating backgrounds for removal extraordinarily accurate.Perfect Resize 7.5 // Perfect Resize is renowned across the photography and print-ing industries for its ability to increase image size well over 1,000 percent without the loss of sharpness or detail.Focal Point 2 // Create realistic selective focus and depth-of-field effects after the shot. Choose from a selection of lens presets to produce a specific bokeh, or adjust controls to get the amount and kind of blur you want.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

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In our industry, time is

money, and when you’re

sitting down to edit your

images, the last thing

you want to do is waste

your time using clumsy

software. In the Editing

Software category, you’ll

find a list of resources we

think can help you save

time and money, and

produce better images.

EDITING

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

Kubota imaging tools should be part of your workflow vocabulary if they aren’t already. With innovative tools for both Lightroom and PhotoShop, team Kubota makes it easy for you to create outstanding images for your clients.

The new 3-in-1 Kubota Dashboard combines action, borders and textures, and album design Dashboards, making them even easier to use.

Several new free features have been added, including the ability to batch actions through the Dashboard, allowing users to load any of the actions into their actions palette and use them through the PhotoShop Batch function.

Users can control and manage their own actions with the new Dashboard, which includes about 50 essential tools. All of this is available for free.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!|CY

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F E AT U R E D P R O D U C T S - E D I T I N G

Unlike designers, photographers don’t always need all the features of expensive video editing software. CyberLink PhotoDirector is the ideal tool for them.

Here are some of the key features PhotoDirector offers photographers.• End-to-end Workflow Solution, now for

Windows and Mac• Organize and retrieve photos more easily

with new face recognition technology• Transform your photos into masterpieces

with powerful regional and global adjustment tools

• Extensive photo presets, including the new HDR effect

• Bring out stunning photos with people beautifier and the new body shaper

• Remove unwanted objects with Content Aware Removal

• Share your photos in high-quality prints and on the Web; create animated slideshows

• CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

T R E N D I N G P R O D U C T S

| PORTRAIT PROFESSIONAL | Portrait Professional is a popular photo editing program from Anthropics Technology, which claims to be “trained in human beauty.” Portrait Professional is a popular and award-winning product used by portrait photographers worldwide.

| ADOBE | At the heart of the photography editing software world sits Adobe. Now under the Creative Cloud moniker, Adobe has incorporated Behance commu-nity features into its desktop applications, including Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator.

| XARA | Xara, one of the oldest software developers in the UK, produces Web-based products thatinclude Photo and Graphic Designer 9. Its software specialty is photo editing and enhancement.

| COREL | Corel Corporation created one of the first graphics programs for Windows. It specializes in photo editing software, including PaintShop Pro X5 and PhotoImpact X3.

| ARCSOFT | Arcsoft is headed by CEO Michael Deng, a technology scientist with a lifelong passion for photography. ArcSoft is a pioneer in photo and video imaging technologies. It specializes in photo editing software products and apps that feature filters and special effects inside a user interface.

Having the r ight editing

software can mean the

d i f f e rence between

minutes &

hours in front of your

computer.

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

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This is one of the most powerful marketing tools on the market today! It’s easy to use and viral in nature—your clients will go out of their way to share their images, and your logo and brand with them. Plain and simple, this is good for business!

It’s been a little over a year since StickyAlbums splashed onto the scene. The concept is simple yet incredibly powerful. Creating a custom mobile app for each of our clients is the ultimate way to knock their socks off and kick-start your word-of-mouth referrals like nothing else has before.

Because it is a subscription-based service, the company recommends creating a StickyAlbums for your clients just after they have placed their print order. This way you don’t have to worry about competing with print sales, but more importantly, this is when they are most excited to share their images with their friends and family. Now they don’t have to wait two weeks for the prints—they can have their favorite images with them wherever they go.

This is a marketing tool first and foremost. No one wants to look through a hundred images on their mobile device. Your albums will go viral when you put the very best images in your clients’ StickyAlbums.

StickyAlbums’ most important feature is that it allows images to be saved offline. Clients download the app one time, and the images are available on their phone with no data usage required when they want to show them off. And because the images are local after the first download, they open really fast.

Additional features include unlimited album creation, unlimited images, social media integration, YouTube integration, password protection for albums, and custom branding.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

M O B I L E A P P S

WATCHNOW

The world is shrinking

and becoming incredibly

social. Mobile apps help

you market your business

and connect with your

clients in ways never

before possible. In the

Mobile Apps category, we

help you join the age of

the Internet with our list

of apps.

MOBILE APPS

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

| SQUARE | Square is a popular mobile business solution that allows photographers (and small business owners) to accept credit card payments via iPhone, iPad, or Android. The company collects a 2.75 percent fee per swipe, with “no additional fees and next-day deposits.”

| SNAPSEED | Snapseed, a creation of Nik Software (recently purchased by Google), is a versatile iPhone editing app that emphasizes editing on “one image only,” just like PhotoShop. It includes several creative filters.

T R E N D I N G P R O D U C T S MOBILE APPS

| FILTERSTORM | Filterstorm offers a desktop-style photo editor on your mobile phone. It supports up to five layers at a time, and allows you to make adjustments including brush, gradient, color range, vignette, and opacity.

| POCKET LIGHT METER | With this free mobile app, first developed by NuWaste, you can use your iPhone camera as a light meter. It measures reflected light, and also allows reciprocity calculations. It can be used in conjunction with manual film cameras, and also offers “better low light performance.”

I t ’s hard to remember l i fe

before cel l phones.

Your cl ients want to see images NOW

& share them

with the world. . .

show them how!

The r ight mobi le apps

wi l l get your name out there

& let your cl ients

do your market ing for you!

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

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With over 50,000 businesses using StudioCloud for their management needs, I would say this company knows a thing or two about studio management.

In our studio, we needed a tool that would allow us to track customer data, including contact information, sales data, and history, as well as conduct robust scheduling. StudioCloud has become the hammer in our studio toolbox.

Two of my favorite features are automatic email reminders and the ability to integrate my calendar with my iPhone and iCal.

StudioCloud provides an easy-to-use cloud-based business solution that includes client management, calendaring, point-of-sale, bookkeeping, reporting, marketing campaigns, and project management tools. Utilizing the Adobe Flash Platform, StudioCloud is able to provide an intuitive user interface across multiple devices and screens where creative businesses can access their information with or without an Internet connection. StudioCloud is used by tens of thousands of creative professionals—including photographers, designers, and videographers—in over 100 countries.

Out of the gate, StudioCloud is a powerful tool for any business. With the addition of its Add-On services, it becomes cost-effective business management software that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and customize for your business.

StudioCloud provides impressive mobility by syncing all of your StudioCloud data between the cloud and all of your Internet-enabled devices.

CloudProofing // CloudProofing by StudioCloud offers photographers an easy and powerful integrated online proofing system they can use to sell their images online.CloudBooking // CloudBooking by StudioCloud offers an integrated online booking solution that is fully customizable to meet most every business’s booking needs.CloudAlerts // CloudAlerts provides automatic email, text message, and postcard reminders to businesses, their employees, and their customers. CloudStorage // CloudStorage provides online integrated storage.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

ST U D I O M A N AG E M E N T

WATCHNOW

Being organized can help

your studio stand out from

the crowd and provide a

better level of customer

service. In the Studio

Management category,

we have reviewed several

platforms that will help you

manage your studio—whether

you’re a one-man operation

or have a stable of shooters

working for you.

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S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

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Light Blue Software makes one product: Light Blue, business management software for photographers.

It’s designed for all types of photographers, it’s easy to use, and it makes admin simple.

This company knows that photographers would much prefer to be out shooting and making money than doing their business admin! Light Blue gave its software to thousands of photographers around the world in exchange for their feedback; it’s a small, responsive company that uses that feedback to make its software even better.

Light Blue is desktop software, so you don’t need an Internet connection to use it. That’s a massive advantage over Web-based systems—you will always have access to your data! For photographers who want to manage their business on the go, Light Blue has recently developed iPad and iPhone apps as well.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

| PIXIFI |Pixifi, founded by photographer Tim Hussey, is designed to simplify and organize your photography business. The all-inclusive studio management program allows you to input clients, billing, leads, workshops, events, invoicing, payments, locations, and more.

| SHOOTQ | ShootQ helps automate and optimize your business so you can spend less time doing paperwork and more time being creative. From lead tracking to online booking and payment collection, ShootQ is a studio management program that can assist you from initial client contact to final product delivery.

| SIMPLY STUDIO | Simply Studio is a studio management system designed to help photographers keep track of clients, stay on top of bookkeeping, and deliver final products. It touts itself as “the best online proofing and selling system,” promising to “increase sales and provide clients with a great experience.”

| STUDIO PLUS SOFTWARE | Studio Plus Software offers a full array of studio management solutions designed to help photographers manage their business by providing digital workflow and e-commerce solutions.

| PSM QUEST | PSM Quest is a studio management program designed to make it easy to manage your photography business. Its developers promise “value, ease of use, and utility.”

T R E N D I N G P R O D U C T S FEATURED PRODUCTSSTUDIO MANAGEMENT

Keeping your

business organized

can be a job in & of itself.

simplify & automate as much as you can wi th s tud io management too l s !

Spend your time & energy

be i ng c r ea t i v e & increasing your bottom line!

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

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We live in a digital world, and most if not all photographers require a digital storefront. When was the last time you heard a client say, “I was just walking by and decided to have my picture taken”? Reality check. It doesn’t work that way!

Today, our storefront is the beginning of the process for most of our clients. Your website is your store, and clients make decisions about your business and if they want to work with you based on what they see.

Zenfolio wants to simplify the process of building and maintaining your virtual store. All while making complex development a thing of the past for you and your business.

It offers an all-in-one portfolio and online proofing solution that is ready as soon as you open your account. Choose from a selection of built-in pages or create custom pages to suit your individual needs.

All Zenfolio sites are built using HTML and HTML5, making them easily compatible with mobile devices.

Every account comes with a fully integrated photo blog that maintains your design identity and allows for an easy showcase of photos and videos in blog posts.

The shopping cart and the entire checkout experience are fully integrated with your website. The Zenfolio e-commerce platform is designed for photographers by providing them the flexibility and features to get from shooting to selling in as little time as possible.

In addition to using a custom URL, Zenfolio gives you tools for increasing the visibility of your site. Everything that needs to be done to make your site search-engine optimized is done for you automatically, behind the scenes.

You can include social media buttons from Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, and Twitter into your pages, encouraging sharing between your visitors and enabling viral promotion of your content.

Entice your customers with special deals by using the flexible coupon functionality. You can create amount- or percentage-based coupons, make them applicable to a specific event, set expiration dates or number of uses, and more.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

W E B S I T E D E S I G N & H O ST I N G

WATCHNOW

In today’s ever-changing

social market, your website

is the first vision of your

work, and today’s client is

extremely tech-savvy. Is your

website prime time? In the

Website Design category,

we review a list of website

providers that can get you

and your business on the

right path—quickly, easily,

and effectively.

W E B S I T E D E S I G N

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

LightRocket is all about delivering value. Its creators have firsthand understanding of the challenges facing photographers, as well as the opportunities.

Core services include secure cloud storage, customizable personal websites, and archive management tools.

LightRocket takes no commission or service fees. It acts as a service hub for each member’s personal archives, providing professional but easy-to-use tools for managing, marketing, and distributing digital archives. The service has a distinctly professional feel, and we expect that it will appeal to anybody with passion for photography. The team at LightRocket believes in providing a great service and continually evolving, expanding, and improving functionality. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

When I started my business, I launched my first website through PhotoBiz. It was easy to use and gave me the professional look I needed.

PhotoBiz specializes in designing and hosting HTML5 portfolio and content sites, stores, blogs, and client proofing, all of which can be seen on mobile and tablet devices.

All of its website solutions are built on a simple online control panel powered by the Passionate Support team.

Whether you want to show off your work, sell online, or tell your story, you’re covered with these website solutions.

Why PhotoBiz?

1 Access to a collection of interchangeable designs so you can update the look and feel of your website anytime2 Unlimited access to the Passionate Support team3 The company is continuously building in-novative new designs, adopting new technol-ogy, and integrating new features to enhance its products

PhotoBiz’s newest product is Point of Sale. It’s powered by its Store, and allows you to make sales on the go through your Apple or Android smartphone.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

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F E AT U R E D P R O D U C T S - W E B S I T E D E S I G N & H O ST I N G

| CREATIVEMOTIONDESIGN |CreativeMotionDesign specializes in portfolio website designs for photographers. It offers HTML5, Flash, unlimited pages, easy content management, a splash page, HD video pages, and a built-in photo cart.

| LIVEBOOKS| Founded in 2005, Livebooks is a content management platform that offers photo sharing, e-commerce, and print-on-demand solutions for websites, mobile applications, and digital storefronts. The company’s primary focus is on “elegance in design, quality in product, and simplicity in the user experience.”

T R E N D I N G P R O D U C T S

| APHOTOFOLIO |APhotoFolio was founded in 2008 by Erik Dungan and Rob Haggart (former director of photography for Outside and Men’s Journal), whose focus is on website design for photographers. They say to look no further if you seek “beautiful designs, ease of use, and powerful customizations.”

| FOLIOLINK | Foliolink offers “websites for the creative” that are designed to help photographers stand out from the crowd. It offers Flash and HTML5 designs, as well as management tools that allow the user to switch designs and control image sizes. It also offers iPad and iPhone shadow sites, customization tools, e-commerce, SEO enhancements, and more.

| PHOTOSHELTER |PhotoShelter offers website and business tools that help photographers grow their business. Its websites include built-in e-commerce, secure cloud storage, client proofing tools, and more. Its site solutions include built-in SEO and social media tools.

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

The average vis i tor

is on

your website less than 3 min.

You have

3 mins or less

to te l l the viewer

who you are

& why they should

hire you .

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Album design. Whoa. Did you just get chills of horror thinking about it? Next to editing images, this is the biggest time sink for any photographer. When I first started designing wedding albums, I would spend six to ten hours per album. It was brutal.

I had to look for tools to streamline the process. FotoFusion is one such tool!

Both Mac- and PC- compatible. And with two versions, Enhanced and Extreme, you can create a beautiful, professional book in a fraction of the time it would take using other tools. Bottom line:The tool is easy to learn and easy to use.It’s loaded with features.

Print your albums anywhere. Easily adjusted form factors allow you to get your 10x10 bridal book printed in one place, and then in just a few clicks you can resize the book and send it off to a different printer as an 8x10.

Blending Modes // The most powerful image tool to be added to the FotoFusion family in a long time allows you to enhance your images in unique and beautiful ways.

Image blending modes can be applied to a single photo or “mixed in” with the canvas using background modes to create stunning overlaid results. Effect presets transform images in one click, while advanced settings allow you to adjust blending options and create your own recipes.

Web albums // Make a project . . . click one button . . . and bam!—your project shows up as a digital album on an iPad, iPhone, or Android device, or in a PC or Mac Web browser.

Flip from page to page like a book, jump to any page, or share it by email, Facebook, or Twitter. Albums are available for 30 days from publication. V5 users can publish as many online albums as they like, at no charge. Enjoy!

Project Versioning // Go back in time and load earlier versions of projects, listed by date and time.

Lose power or shut down unexpectedly? FotoFusion now includes auto save and crash restore. Never worry about losing a single edit.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

ALBUMS, PRESENTATION & PROOFING

WATCHNOW

ALBUMSPRESENTAT ION & PROOF ING

Providing your clients with a

well-designed album is crucial

for sales in your studio. But

who wants to spend six to ten

hours in front of a computer

that could be spend out in the

field shooting? In the Album

Design, Presentation, and

Proofing category, we review

a handful of programs that will

reduce the time you spend on

album design, increase your

sales, and give you more time

to dedicate to other parts of

your business.

S H U T T E R M AG A Z I N E | www. B e h i n d Th e S h u t te r. co m

T R E N D I N G P R O D U C T S

| ALBUM DS | Album DS (Design Made Simple) is an album design tool that primarily functions as a toolbar for Adobe PhotoShop CS and higher. Its features include preferred template folders, automatic album creation, website creation, slideshows, and template saving.

| FUNDY SOFTWARE | Fundy Software, founded by Andrew “Fundy” Funderburg, is devoted to “helping photographers design faster and better than they ever have.” Its specialty is album design and workflow software solutions.

| COLLAGES | Collages is a lab for professional photographers that also offers free album design software. Its software, for both Macs and PCs, offers hundreds of page styles, makes, and backgrounds.

| YOUSELECTIT |YouSelectIt allows photographers to design an album in “30 seconds or less” on both Macs and PCs. Features include 10,000-plus templates, custom templates, and image organization.

| VIAPHOTO |ViaPhoto is an album design software solu-tion that helps streamline photography work-flow with “just one click.” With it, photog-raphers can collaborate online, create album designs, and proof photos.

| PHOTOGENE |The Photogene mobile app is about “improving your digital photos and having fun” with its comprehensive set of professional editing tools.

You gotta show it to sell it! It’s that simple. The folks at TimeExposure have made it easier than ever to show it to your clients and generate big sales in the process.

TimeExposure was founded in 2004 by Australian portrait/wedding photographer Fran Howlett and her husband, Peter, to create innovative software for professional photographers.

ProSelect, the company’s flagship software, provides photographers with a presentation, sales, and workflow solution for running a professional in-person sales presentation with which you can easily design, show, order, and produce what you are selling. Wall-mounted products can be framed and shown at exact size.

ProSelect’s Room View feature allows you to show an image or layout on the client’s own walls, but you can also create and show complete wall gallery designs with any mix of framed prints, composites, and canvases at the same time.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

No commissions, no set-up fees! Music to my ears. Who wants to pay commissions to hosting companies when it’s your work that created the sale?

ShootProof is an online photo proofing service that allows photographers to upload, share, and sell photography online. You control your products, pricing, and print labs. The service presents your photos in a profes-sional gallery, handles the ordering process, and allows you to spend more time taking pictures!

It’s all about choice. The service allows pho-tographers to “Shoot and Share” or “Shoot and Sell” on a client-by-client and event-by-event basis. The photographer controls print and digital options. The print/product sales markup and digital images can be for free or for sale at any price per gallery. ShootProof galleries work across all devices.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

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F E AT U R E D P R O D U C T S - ALBUMS, PRESENTATION & PROOFING

NEXTMONTH

CAMERAS & ACCESSORIES

Are you always wondering

what you should get next?

Come back next month for

our comprehensive look at

cameras and accessories!